The "Grands Causses" and Cévennes region has been classified as UNESCO world heritage in 2011, from which a consequent area was already part of the Cevennes National Park since 1972, is the only inhabited National Park in France. 
According to UNESCO, the Grand Causses and the Cévennes are a Mediterranean agro-pastoral Cultural Landscape This 302,319 ha big area, in the southern part of central France, is a mountain landscape scattered by deep valleys and gorges that is representative of the relationship between agro-pastoral systems and their biophysical environment. Villages and large stone farmhouses on spacious terraces of the Grands Causses reflect the abbeys' organization from the 11th century. Also of high significance is the Mont Lozère which is one of the last places in Europe where summer transhumance is still practised in the traditional way. (UNESCO, 2015)

​

"Too poor to host cities,too rich to be abandoned"

​

Integrity

The wholeness or intactness of the cultural landscape is related to the survival of the forces that shaped the landscape as well as to the symptoms that those forces produced. The aim is to maintain these through the perpetuation of traditional activities.

​

Authenticity

The key structures of the landscape: buildings, terraces, walls and watercourses retain a high degree of authenticity in terms of their building structures, and many of the bancels (terraces) need conservation.

​

Cultural Landscape

The upland of the Causses have been shaped by agro-pastoralism over three millennia. In the Middle Ages, the development of cities in the surrounding Mediterranean plains, and especially the growth of religious institutions, prompted the evolution of a land structure based on agro-pastoralism, the basis of which is still in place today. "Too poor to host cities, too rich to be abandoned", the landscape of Causses and Cévennes are the result of the modification of the natural environment by agro-pastoral systems over a millennium. (UNESCO, 2015)

​

You will find further interesting links to pages especially dedicated to our beautiful region Cévennes. We are not making any publicity for business intending to use our values in order to promote their services, but we do consider a certain viability in some of these projects, as they are reflecting on regional necessities and respect of the above stated values.